James Abbott McNeill Whistler – American 1834-1903
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James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American painter
and etcher, who assimilated Japanese art styles, made technical
innovations, and championed modern art. Many regard him as preeminent
among etchers.
Three of Whistler's best-known portraits, Arrangement in Black
and Grey No. 1: The Artist's Mother (Musée d'Orsay, Paris),
Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1: Thomas Carlyle (1872-1874,
City Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow), and Harmony in
Grey and Green: Miss Cicely Alexander (Tate Gallery, London)
were painted around 1872. In 1877 he exhibited a number of landscapes
done in the Japanese manner; these paintings, which he called nocturnes,
outraged conservative art opinion, which did not understand his
avoidance of narrative detail, his layers of atmospheric color,
and his belief in art for art's sake. The English art critic John
Ruskin wrote a caustically critical article, and Whistler, charging
slander, sued Ruskin for damages. He won the case, one of the most
celebrated of its kind, but the expense of the trial forced him
into bankruptcy. Selling the contents of his studio, Whistler left
England, worked intensively from 1879 to 1880 in Venice, then returned
to England and resumed his attack on the academic art tradition.
In later years Whistler devoted himself increasingly to etching,
drypoint, lithography, and interior decoration. The Thames
series (1860), the First Venice series (1880), and the Second
Venice series (1881) heightened his standing as an etcher and
won him success when they were exhibited in London in 1881 and 1883.
The Peacock Room, which he painted for a private London residence
(begun 1876 and moved in 1919 to the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington,
D.C.), is the most noteworthy example of his interior decoration.
Toward the end of his life, when he lived in Paris, Whistler came
to be regarded as a major artist. He died in London on July 17,
1903.
Whistler, Women, and Fashion
by Margaret MacDonald, Susan Galassi, Aileen Ribeiro, Patricia de
Montfort – Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Yale University
Press (May 11, 2003)
Costume and fashion were a lifelong obsession for James McNeill
Whistler (1834-1903). His exquisite depictions of women and the
details of their clothing contributed to his career as one of the
most accomplished and successful—if controversial—artists
of the nineteenth century. This lavishly illustrated book focuses
on fashion in Whistler’s art as a key to understanding his
life and work and as a new means of exploring his relationship with
women and his portraits of them. The book offers new insights into
some of Whistler’s most beloved masterpieces in the context
of art and fashion in the Victorian period.
Illustrated with paintings, pastels, prints, and drawings by Whistler,
the book also presents photographs of his sitters, contemporary
costumes, works by other artists of the period, and artifacts from
Whistler’s studio. These illustrations, with new material drawn
from the Centre for Whistler Studies, illuminate the interaction
between the artist and the women he portrayed during his fifty years
in Paris and London—mistresses, family members, artists, actresses,
aristocrats, and many others.
James McNeill Whistler was one of the most misinterpreted creative
talents of his age. While devoted to the expression of the beautiful,
he was among the first to recognize that popularized arts and commercialized
leisure were complex, interrelated phenomena that made urban life
"modern." Whistler's showmanship had far greater impact
than countless imitations of his The White Girl and Portrait of
the Painter's Mother might suggest. His purposeful use of past art;
his intermingling of private and public spaces; his ability to tailor
his work to the realities of the Victorian marketplace; his understanding
and exploitation of shifting economic, class, and gender roles;
and his clever use of fashion and decoration all lead us to a richer
understanding of "modernism" and a broader assessment
of his contribution to it.
Whistler's emphatically aesthetic pictures, made the more inscrutable
by purposefully confusing titles, remain uneasy pieces to the present
time. Probing some of these tensions, Dr. Curry explores the intersection
of Whistler's determined aestheticism with the commercial art world.
Key examples of Whistler's paintings, drawings, and prints are set
against related images from both fine art and popular culture drawn
from the past two hundred years. Approximately 250 color and monotone
illustrations.
James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) left the United States for Europe
at the age of twenty-one, never to return, and his style developed
independently of American art currents. Nonetheless, he left an
indelible mark on the art of his native land, for his modernist
aesthetic influenced the work of a generation of American painters.
This beautifully illustrated book—published to commemorate
the centenary of the artist's death—addresses Whistler's extraordinary
legacy and establishes his pivotal place in the history of American
art. After Whistler juxtaposes fourteen of the artist's most important
works with an array of pictures by thirty-eight other American painters—including
Henry Ossawa Tanner, William Merritt Chase, and John Singer Sargent—to
demonstrate how Whistler's American contemporaries were affected
by his techniques, color palette, compositions, and subject matter.
The introduction to the book provides an overview of Whistler's
association with American artists and the reception of his work
in the United States. The essays that follow discuss Whistler's
Venetian sojourn and its effect on the American artists who flocked
to that city; his relationship with Philadelphia's art community;
the Whistler Memorial Exhibition held in Boston in 1904; and much
more. This insightful volume is essential reading for anyone interested
in American art and Whistler's role in its history.
Arriving at their mature styles independently of one another, the
renowned American expatriate painters James McNeill Whistler and
John Singer Sargent and the British artist Philip Wilson Steer are
often credited with bringing modern art to London near the end of
the 19th century. Inspired by the lively brushwork of painters from
Velázquez to Monet, each of these artists developed a distinctive
approach to Impressionism, utilizing spontaneously applied strokes
of paint and closely modulated colors to caputre the effects of
light as it played across the fingure and landscape.
This selection of masterworks by the three artists reveals the stylistic
links that give evidence of their shared aesthetic lineage. Essays
by Tate curator David Fraser Jenkins and art historian Avis Berman
provide insight into their lives and works within the cultural milieu
of fin-de-siècle London, including the experiences of the
young and somewhat eccentric aesthete W. Graham Robertson.
NOTE: Also available in a six-tape
boxed
set featuring Goya, Whistler, Courbet, Freidrich,
Rossetti, Delacroix
Whistler's style, despite his early influence by French painting,
shows a distinctly English compromise between discipline and innovation.
He became famous for his technique of placing a figure against a
background that was virtually empty and colorless, as in the popular
painting that has come to be known as Whistler's Mother.
James McNeill Whistler was one of the most contentious artists of
the 19th century, but was also one of the most misunderstood. Painter,
draughtsman, etcher, watercolorist and interior designer, he was
renowned as much for his wit, style and elegance as he was for his
work. The story of Whistler's life unfolds in a mixture of humor
and pathos, told through images found in his paintings to the music
of Debussy, who found inspiration from his work.
The
Paintings of James McNeill Whistler (2 vols.)
Andrew Maclaren Young, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and
Hamlish Miles Hardcover: 567 pages Publisher: Paul Mellon Center
BA (September 10, 1980)
These two volumes form a work of reference of the highest importance
to students of nineteenth-century art in Europe and America.
Showcasing rarely exhibited oils, watercolors, and pastels, Mr.
Whistler's Gallery explores an influential exhibition the artist
organized at the Dowdeswells' gallery in London in May 1884. Not
only did Whistler select the works to be included and decide where
they were hung, he also designed the color scheme, furnishings,
and picture frames. He titled his installation an Arrangement in
Flesh Colour & Grey. Whistler's "arrangement" attracted
a great deal of press coverage that spurred attendance and transformed
his art exhibition into a widely discussed cultural "event."
Mr. Whistler's Gallery will appeal to scholars, design enthusiasts,
and all those interested in nineteenth century British and American
art.
Whistler and His Circle in Venice is a landmark publication, offering
a fresh examination of one of the most influential turn-of-the-century
artists on the 100th anniversary of his death in 1903.
This stunning new survey focuses on a little-documented period of
Whistler's career: his stay in Venice from 1879 to 1880. Arriving
in the footsteps of such renowned artists as Canaletto and Turner,
whose enthusiasm for representing the city was shared by so many
Grand Tourists, Whistler was determined to do more than simply capture
its popular views. He wanted to penetrate further—to achieve
a greater understanding of the nature of Venice itself.
Whistler and His Circle in Venice explores Whistler's struggle
to find a "Venice of the Venetians," through a sumptuous
collection of his pastels, etchings, watercolors, and oil paintings.
It goes on to examine in detail the significance of Whistler's etchings
in terms of his technical and compositional innovations.
As this book reveals, Whistler's new approach to Venice was profoundly
significant, challenging and redefining the ways in which others
viewed the city. It also traces the remarkable breadth of his influence,
on numerous artists in the US and Europe, including Walter Sickert,
and most notably on American artist John Singer Sargent, whose lifelong
association with Whistler—begun during this stay in Venice—receives
a new and in-depth appraisal. Whistler's impact on pictorial photography—and
especially on one of the great American masters, Alfred Stieglitz—is
explored here for the first time.
Whistler and His Circle in Venice offers new insight into the career
of one of the period's most important figures. Packed with Whistler's
beautiful evocations of one of the best-loved cities in the world,
this book will appeal as much to lovers of Venice as to those fascinated
by Whistler himself.
James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), the American-born artist who
spent much of his working life in London, played a crucial role
in the development of 20th-century modernism. His art was profoundly
influenced by the written word, especially the writings of Baudelaire,
Swinburne, Mallarmé, and Edgar Allan Poe. This book examines
literary and other aspects of Whistler's modernity, discusses his
relationship with English and French painting, and sheds new light
on his famous libel trial with art critic John Ruskin.
Whistler's Venice (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in
Britis)by Alastair Grieve Hardcover: 216 pages Publisher: Paul Mellon
Center BA (November 10, 2000)
Planning only a brief stay in Venice in 1879, Whistler found himself
enchanted by the city's beauty and remained for more than a year.
This lovely book is the first to follow Whistler's progress throughout
Venice as he produced fifty etchings, a few oils, and a remarkable
group of one hundred pastels. Alongside each of his evocative portraits
of the city are photographs of the actual site. Published for the
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
Painter, etcher, draughtsman, lithographer, watercolourist, and
author of critical essays and aphorisms, James McNeill Whistler
had a tremendous influence on the art and aesthetics of his era.
Born in Massachusetts in 1834, he settled in London when he was
twenty-five years old and for the next four decades produced hundreds
of highly acclaimed (and sometimes highly criticised) works. His
prodigious output and proficiency, along with his eccentricities,
polemics, and arguments with critics, won him wide recognition.
This catalogue raisonne of Whistler's drawings, pastels and watercolours
makes available many of his works that have never before been exhibited
or published and vividly demonstrates the wide range of his art.
His drawings reveal the everyday working out of his ideas and note
the world as it passed by Whistler with vigour and humour. The pastels
include sensitive portraits, vigorous studies of models in the studio,
and detailed views of Venetian palaces. The watercolours, perhaps
his finest works, catch the subtle colours of northern skies and
ever-changing seascapes.
Whistler's Mother: An American Icon by Margaret F. MacDonald
(Editor) – Paperback: 160 pages Publisher: Lund Humphries Publishers
(November 1, 2003)
James McNeil Whistler by Lisa N. Peters – Hardcover:
80 pages Publisher: Todtri Productions, Ltd. (September 1, 1998)
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James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American painter
and etcher, who assimilated Japanese art styles, made technical
innovations, and championed modern art. Many regard him as preeminent
among etchers.
Whistler and His Mother: An Unexpected Relationship
Whistler, Women, and Fashion
James MacNeill Whistler: Uneasy Pieces
After Whistler: The Artist and His Influence on American Painting
Whistler, Sargent, and Steer: Impressionists in London from Tate
Collections
Color, NTSC 
Color, NTSC 
Andrew Maclaren Young, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and
Hamlish Miles Hardcover: 567 pages Publisher: Paul Mellon Center
BA (September 10, 1980)
Mr. Whistler's Gallery: Pictures at an 1884 Exhibition
Whistler and His Circle in Venice
Tate British Artists: James McNeill Whistler
James McNeill Whistler: Beyond the Myth
James McNeill Whistler: Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours: A
Catalogue Raisonne
Whistler's Mother: An American Icon
James McNeil Whistler
